


Proof

by humansandotherpeople



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Shipping, The Empty Hearse theories, fanfiction and the internet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humansandotherpeople/pseuds/humansandotherpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Laura came to be convinced that Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty had to be involved with each other, and how she was proven right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proof

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this pretty much directly after the Empty Hearse, when it was still canon compliant. What with the Jim-scene in Sherlock's mind palace in hlv, not even I can keep on assuming that Sherlock knew all along that Jim was alive, so I guess it's an AU now.

"Are you out of your mind?" Philip's words haunted Laura even while the world learned that she had been right about one half of her beliefs, the one generally (if not by herself) deemed more important. Sherlock Holmes was back and had been alive all along and all she could think about were the comebacks she hadn't thought of against that one stupid ableist ring leader of that one stupid fanclub with their stupid hats... "Why yes, thank you for asking, I have been struggling with a major personality disorder all my life, but I'm on medication and I'm mostly doing fine." Or just a simple "Like you don't have issues! I can recommend a psychiatrist if you want."  
The problem with Philip and the likes of him was that they didn't see that it was important which words you used to convey your meaning – not that she thought the meaning behind his words had been justified, but she had managed to counter that, at least. Well. Start to counter. She was glad that Holmes had turned out to not be dead, she really was, but couldn't the revelation have waited until she had presented her evidence? Real evidence this time, just as compelling as the "sightings" Philip loved so much, if not more, not just what she found out about Holmes' character when she talked to the people who had known him.  
Philip was essentially right every time he accused Laura of not really sharing the Empty Hearse's interests. Everyone in that group needed Holmes to be some noble hero except for her. But they shared her belief that Holmes had survived the Bart's incident, and she could make good use of their research into that in her theories.  
She had been reading John Watson's blog for a long time and while the veteran clearly adored Holmes, she found the controlling, sometimes abusive behaviours he described without noticing it rather shady from the start and had decided early on that it would be best to ignore that she found Holmes attractive in a weird way. That would turn out a lot harder for Moriarty; his show trial had turned into a long stretch of very irritating sexual frustration for her.  
At first she had firmly believed that the media was right about Holmes having invented Moriarty, and told herself over and over that she should not be that disappointed that Moriarty had never existed. (But what an actor that Richard Brook must have been!) But she had had her doubts about the suicide. If he could fake all these crimes, wouldn't it be easy for him to fake that one too? And there was the matter of Richard Brook, who had vanished without a trace except a sighting of him in St Bart's on that day, going upstairs; and a pool of blood on the roof. She couldn't find anyone who knew Brook more closely, so she had talked to Kitty Reilly.  
Laura was good at listening, which wasn't a good consolation for how very few people ever listened to her, but it had got her far in these investigations. Kitty had told her about the blind fury with which Holmes had chased the terrified actor who had given him away up her stairs, told her how that had cemented her belief that what Brook had told her was nothing but the truth, especially the parts that she couldn't – and she was very sorry about this but she just couldn't, couldn't do that to Richard – disclose, as she had promised Richard that not a word of it would ever reach his family.  
That had turned Laura's stomach. So Holmes had abused Brook, probably sexually, that would be where the shame came from, and he had had some sick reason for taking away his body after he faked his death that she didn't even want to think about. Sure, that couldn't be the only explanation, but now that she had the pictures in her head nothing else really seemed to fit the facts. Then she asked Kitty whether she had had any contact to that family she had mentioned, Kitty had said no, she had not been able to find them, and suddenly there was a new fact that did not quite fit.  
She had considered talking to John Watson, asking him if Moriarty and Holmes had really been as … flirtatious at the pool as he'd described, or if he had taken artistic liberties. But no, Watson had practically been under siege from journalists and Holmes' fans, and he had spent so much time defending his friend, he would certainly not welcome someone with her opinions on him.  
So the next place she had gone for information was New Scotland Yard. No, admittedly, she had spent a lot of time listening to conspiracy theorists on the internet before that, and also discovered that some of them also wrote, well, pornography. Granted, some of it was just stories, but a lot... She had sworn never to touch it with a ten-foot pole, and, of course, eventually failed. But it didn't hurt anyone that she read it, did it? And she'd got on with the proper investigations, too. Eventually.  
The officers she had been able to reach who had both known Holmes before and worked on the case were Sally Donovan and Philip Anderson. Sally and Laura had got along splendidly, except for the fact that Sally had been a little too content in believing that Holmes was dead to even consider what else might have happened, even while she said nobody should ever be glad that someone was dead. (Laura heard the unspoken "but think of all the damage that has been prevented this way" clear as day.)  
Philip had been, well, Philip. Pretty much exactly the opposite, though Sally insisted they used to be on the same page. But a light had started shining in his eyes once he had heard her talk about Sherlock surviving St Bart's, regardless of context, and he had dragged her to his Holmes fanclub's meetings, and that's how she met _them_.  
She found people who deified Sherlock Holmes disconcerting, but considering the fanfiction she read and had started writing, she really should be tolerant, or so she had kept telling herself. And it was just as well that she had found them: Even after Philip had been thrown out of the force, they still had police contacts and she had got some of her most important leads from them.  
For instance, she would never have got the idea that someone working in the morgue must have been in on it on her own, much less known that it had been Molly Hooper, who had worked with Holmes, and, according to Philip, had had a very obvious crush on him, who had done the postmortem.  
Laura had talked to Molly. Philip seemed to have been right for once: Yes, she had been in love with Holmes, and yes, she had probably been hiding something. But more importantly, she had confirmed that Holmes was an utterly despicable human being and freely admitted that she had allowed him to use bodies from the morgue and even take home … parts for "experiments" off the records.  
"I'd rather not be right about some things" had been the only thought on Laura's mind for several days after that.  
And there were what they called the sightings – intricate cases from all over the world that had the local police helpless solved within seconds...  
And then, the Empty Hearse had been among the first to find actual evidence that Moriarty had, in fact, existed after all. That had fitted the general theory accepted among members of the Hearse (that Moriarty had somehow coerced Holmes into a double suicide that he could only get out of by believably faking it) so well that it had taken Laura some time to buy into it. But when she had, it had been immediately obvious to her that if Moriarty had existed, he and Holmes must have been working together to a degree – because a man as clever and with as many resources as James Moriarty wouldn't have let a fake suicide pass, would he? On the other hand, with that much money and connections working in the background, it would have been ridiculously easy to fake the fall. And considering that Moriarty's body was missing, they were probably both still alive and out there somewhere.  
She had rewatched the trial on youtube and shuddered at "I thought we had a special something". And then again as the jury pledged not guilty.  
That had been when she began to take Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty fanfiction more seriously than Sherlock Holmes/Richard Brook fanfiction. She had read a lot of it already when the SH/RB relevant to her interests had begun to dwindle, but skimmed it for the interactions and the porn more than actually dealing with the implications of Moriarty being real. Now she had started treating it as literature, comparing and contrasting and getting into discussions about it and writing mental reviews and sometimes actual reviews in the comments.  
And that was how she had found her biggest lead yet.  
Sherlock Holmes read the fanfiction that was being written about him. Sherlock Holmes was on ff.net, on AO3, on tumblr and deviantart and in the multitude of forums devoted to him. Yes, after his "death", too. Yes, he mostly left anonymous comments and sometimes comments from various fake accounts, but he was not very good at pretending to be other people, though he got better in the course of his absence to a point where she couldn't tell whether it was him – his commenting style had been exactly the same as on John Watson's blog to begin with. Of course she had taken the possibility into account that it might just be a fan immitating his style, but then she had tried to strike up conversations with him – them – the posters she suspected to be Holmes.  
She didn't get answers from any of them. This was not an unusual occurence per se, and on looking closer Laura found that there were a lot of questions he didn't reply to, but it awakened her interest in the five girls that did get replies out of him, often instantly. They had few common denominators, one was apparently a Polish twentysomething, another a single mom, one of them Laura had down as a nerdy teenager by wording alone, she never said anything about herself, while one, a fiftysomething maid, pretty much went full disclosure about her personal life and preferences, and one turned out to be a guy. They had all written their own fanfictions, albeit of different quality and volume and as different thematically as they could get for one and the same pairing. They did not interact with each other, and never as fervently with other writers as with the suspected Sherlock Holmes. Who, by the way, had mostly picked those girls' (and that guy's) fanfiction to leave snide comments on.  
When she hadn't been able to think of anything else to compare any more, she ran the texts through a word counter and a collocation extractor. She had not expected anything much from that, she had been pretty sure she would have spotted any unusual patterns with the naked eye. She couldn't have been more wrong.  
Despite the different styles, the same few obscure phrases had turned up among the most used for all five corpuses. She had just been reading over them without noticing how often they were really used. She had had to calm herself down just so she didn't tell the whole internet about her discovery immediately. That didn't have to mean they were all the same person. There could be any number of reasons for their similar choice of phrasing. So Laura had run a test on a corpus assembled from fanfictions by other writers to account for the possibility that these phrases were just more popular among these particular shippers than in the general public. They weren't. Barely any of the others had even used them once.  
Then, and only then, she had told a single one of her internet acquaintances, a certain GundelindeGaukeley from Germany, about her suspicions. She had picked her carefully: Not because she had trusted her not to laugh at her, but because Laura didn't consider herself the computery kind of nerd, and her acquaintance allegedly knew that stuff. Laura had given her the relevant links and her textual analysis and had mused about the possibility of IP tracking. Gundelinde had taken the hint much quicker than Laura had expected.  
Three hours later she had had a list with the locations the messages had come from, along with a note that the ones she suspected to be Holmes' were easy to trace but apparently mostly led to public devices, while the person behind the five people they were directed at – yes, it was very likely that it was just one person – used elaborate proxy constructions, but was apparently attached to the same few devices that they always used. And once you did figure out where they were, it turned out they were never very far from the maybe-Holmes.  
Laura had read the list of dates and locations with her heart pounding fast.  
Yes.  
Yes, they had matched Philip's "sightings". Just about.  
And now she hadn't even got around to presenting all that, just the part of the story the details of which she had never really cared for...  
But now Holmes was back. There was no reason to romanticise him anymore – soon they would see her line of reasoning. Maybe he would even let something about Moriarty slip in public. Maybe he would post on the same forums from his home now, traceable as ever. Maybe... maybe she should talk to him in person. It might be dangerous. But then, she might catch him with lowered defenses, he didn't expect people to know the truth, expected to have tricked them all... Or did he?

After he got involved in a failed bomb attack practically immediately on returning, Holmes finally condescended to speak to the press. Laura found the answers he gave deeply unsatisfactory and cursed at the screen when none of the reporters focussed on the right things. She could be asking the right questions...

When she found herself lurking near 221b Baker Street in hopes of getting to talk to the so-called great detective just two nights later, she was still internally debating whether this was a horrifyingly bad idea. Her stomach lurched when he left the house, collar turned up, coat swishing behind him as he stalked down the street, heading, apparently, directly for the side street from which she had been watching his front door. Should she run? Running would be an adequate response, wouldn't it?  
She watched, paralyzed, as he brushed off an overly eager journalist with ease. What had made her think she'd get any further than that? Why wasn't she running yet? Now it was too late, he was too close, she would only make herself look suspicious now.  
He was looking at her. For a fraction of a second, he even looked directly into her eyes, and her mind too, if the feeling it gave her was any indication of his real abilities. Then he rushed past her. She needed a moment before she was able to move again, turn, stare at his back. Only when he vanished behind a corner did she move from the spot. To go after him. She wasn't sure what she wanted to achieve with that. She doubted that she would stop being far too frightened to approach him any time soon. Did she want him to spot her? Because he would, eventually, she had no illusions about that, even though he was never looking behind himself. Chances were, he already had, but deemed her too unimportant to do anything about her. If he knew that she knew what he had been up to and who with... well, not exactly what, other than critiquing his fanfiction, but who with was sufficiently incriminating in this case anyway.  
She followed him at a distance. He had quite the stride, and after a while she regretted that she wasn't in better shape, but that wasn't enough to make her give up. She wondered where he was headed, whether he simply favoured quiet, narrow alleys over busy streets so he would not be recognised as much, or had a destination somewhere around here. Or whether he was deliberately leading her somewhere where it wouldn't get noticed if he did something to her.  
He stopped. Glanced at his phone. Started pacing.  
What was he waiting for?  
Laura was well aware that stopping walking now, out in the open, would be even more conspicuous than what she had been doing before – they might just have been walking in the same direction by chance. What did people do in these situations? Hide in a doorway, behind a car, maybe if there was some sort of shrubbery... Why were there no convenient fire escapes or recycling containers when you needed them? Why wasn't she even a smoker, that was an excuse for just standing somewhere. Right. Back to the first idea.  
She slipped into the dark shadows of a doorway. She could see Holmes well enough from here, and she hoped to god it was set back far enough to hide her. Also that nobody would try and leave the house while she pressed herself against the front door, hardly daring to breathe.  
Holmes waited impatiently for what seemed like an eternity to Laura. Then, finally, a small figure – was that...? - approached him – could that be...? - emerging from the shadows like someone who was deliberately aiming for an "emerging from the shadows" look – yes, that was definitely James Moriarty.  
He stepped into Holmes' personal space.  
Holmes grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket without warning, drew him close and kissed him. Moriarty was thrown off balance, but, granted, Laura would have been, too, had she been in his place, even if she had expected this kind of thing. She _was_ a bit thrown off balance (that - and turned on against her better judgement), to be quite honest, watching as if hypnotised as Holmes' right hand wandered to the back of Moriarty's head, where it didn't grab him and hold him in place, from what she could see, but barely ghosted over his hair in stark contrast to the aggression of the kiss, and Moriarty holding on to him as if for dear life. It lasted long enough that she came to her senses by the end of it, pulling out her phone, frantically trying to select the night photography function and to turn out the automatic flash (the photos would be dark, yes, but a flash would give her away instantly) without taking her eyes off the pair of them.  
Proof, she would have proof! She was still begging her hands to stop shaking with fear and excitement when Holmes broke away from the kiss and Moriarty let him go reluctantly. Holmes whispered something in his ear. Moriarty grinned with delight, shaking his head slightly. Then he started laughing and whispered something back.  
Laura managed to photograph them like that, laughing together. Blurry and dark. Maybe not as definitely recognisable as she wanted it to be. Well, it would be proof to herself, at least. She had seen this. Moriarty was just as alive as Holmes. They were _involved_ with one another.  
She took another photo when Moriarty gave Holmes a peck on the cheek. Another when he took his hand. A few more when they were walking hand in hand, talking in hushed voices. Then she realised they were walking in the direction of her improvised hideout and pressed herself deeper into her corner, clutching her phone to her chest, as if there was any chance that she could become one with the wall or that the small piece of plastic and circuitry could shield her from view somehow. And they did look absorbed enough with each other's company to maybe pass her without noticing her. There, a step further and she would see their backs and then maybe she could start breathing again.  
They didn't walk that step further. Moriarty let go of Holmes' hand, turned on his heels, smiled at her and sauntered over to her, followed closely by Holmes.  
"Hello, Laura!", Moriarty said cheerfully, extending a hand for her to shake, "nice to make your acquaintance in what they call real life. Did you enjoy the show?"  
She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She couldn't think.  
He let his hand fall to his side with a frown. "Really. And we had such nice conversations online."  
"But you never answered m-", Laura managed to get out. Then it dawned on her. "Gundelinde?"  
"Very much so. Hi!" Moriarty's voice had taken on a grating tone that Laura was certain could give her a headache if she was subjected to it for longer amounts of time, if this strange new truth didn't get to her first.  
"But why would you give out your locations?"  
"Because he has become addicted to being found out", Holmes cut in. "It makes him feel understood, and he rewards us with clues so we go on doing it. He was too good at what he was doing for too long. Give me that." With that, he snatched away her phone, held it up so it caught the light of a streetlamp, and started fiddling with it.  
Before Laura could protest, Moriarty chimed in again: "Then there's the fact that you're clearly very clever – loved the corpus linguistics - though not as clever as you think you are, and we just _like_ clever."  
"I would even go so far as to say that Jim here loves clever", Holmes said, not looking up from the phone.  
"Whereas Sherlock would _never_ do something as mundane as love or – god forbid – have sex!"  
Laura blinked.  
"Here you go", Holmes said, paying no attention to Moriarty, wiping his fingerprints from the phone with the sleeve of his coat and handing it back to her. She checked it: The photos she had just taken had been deleted.  
"How did you know my PIN?", she asked.  
"Wear patterns and fingerprints on the screen. They're always easy."  
Moriarty rolled his eyes at that.  
Laura pocketed her phone. She noticed that the two men were not towering above her. It might have felt that way in her intimidation, but they weren't. She stood straighter. Moriarty was actually smaller than her. Still impressive in his own way, certainly just as attractive as he was on screens, but here he was being smaller than her, and frustrated with Sherlock Holmes, and talking _to her_ for some reason.  
"Why are you doing this?", she demanded.  
"Because we can", Moriarty said, deadpan.  
"Because nobody will believe you", explained Holmes.  
"While the linguistics games were nice, they aren't the kind of proof the public want. You can go ahead and track Sherlock again, no, he was _really_ sloppy -" Sherlock – no, Holmes, she wasn't going to go familiar - gave him a look filled with pure poison for that. "But you don't need to prove to anyone that he's alive and wandering the earth, do you? He's right there! And you can't find me like that. Unless you're GundelindeGaukeley, of course." He snorted. "And this "truth" that you're "witnessing" now only puts you further into tinfoil hat territory. Very sorry."  
She tried to find a flaw with his reasoning. "But I still could -"  
"But you don't want to", Holmes interrupted her. "You're on our side."  
"Sh, I basically had to serve him this one on a golden platter, but let him pretend he figured it out", Moriarty told Laura in a stage whisper that Holmes was clearly supposed to hear. She could see just the slightest bit of indignation on his face in response before he continued: "You root for us. You are afraid of us -"  
"Rightfully so", Moriarty interjected.  
"But you do not want to see us separated by jail, or exile, or death. You are as invested in our relationship as you have ever been in any of your own." He gave her another look. "More. You need love" Jim – no! No, Moriarty – smiled a very small smile at the word. "to prevail. Who can blame you. This culture raises a lot of hopeless romantics."  
"In short", Moriarty said with a lopsided grin, "We're not threatening you, because we don't need to."  
"You're very sure of yourselves", said Laura. She wanted to sound challenging, but it didn't quite work out.  
She believed it. She believed them. She really didn't want to, but she did.  
"I believe we have every right to", said Holmes, reaching for Moriarty's hand again and making to leave. "Come on, Jim."  
Moriarty looked at their conjoined hands for a second, then he gave Laura a little wave and followed, calling out "Nice talking to you!" and blowing her a kiss over his shoulder.  
She watched them walking down the street. It was quite the risk, she couldn't help thinking, they might be seen together like that, there might be someone with a good camera behind any of those windows, and then they wouldn't be able to keep up their little charade...  
"He's been reading _all_ your fanfiction!", she called after them. "All of it! I think that has to mean something!"  
She thought she saw Moriarty look back at her and smile.


End file.
